Pentagon pays Chalabi group for dubious data

Published
6:30 am CST, Thursday, March 11, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi political organization led by Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the interim Iraqi government who has close ties to the Bush administration, for "intelligence collection" about Iraq, according to Defense Department officials.

The classified program, run by the Defense Intelligence Agency since summer 2002, continues a long-standing partnership between the Pentagon and the organization, the Iraqi National Congress, even as the group jockeys for power in a future government. Internal government reviews have found that much of the information generated by the program before the U.S. invasion last year was useless, misleading or even fabricated.

Under the unusual arrangement, the CIA is required to get permission from the Pentagon before interviewing informants from the Iraqi National Congress, according to government officials who have been briefed on the procedures.

The CIA has been working with another Iraqi group, the Iraqi National Accord, to help establish an independent Iraqi intelligence service. The relationship between the CIA and Chalabi's group has been strained for years.

A U.S. intelligence official said the maintenance of the separate, exclusive channel between Chalabi's group and the Defense Intelligence Agency was not interfering with the CIA's effort to set up the new Iraqi service.

Among several defectors introduced by Chalabi's organization to U.S. intelligence officials before the war, at least one was formally labeled a fabricator by the DIA. Others were viewed as having been coached by the Iraqi group to provide intelligence critical of Saddam Hussein's rule. Internal reviews by the Pentagon agency and the National Intelligence Council this year concluded that little of the information from the group had any value.

The payments to the group as part of an "intelligence collection program" was authorized by Congress in 1998.